^,-v 



'-^- 




LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 






UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



AN ADDRESS 



-N 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE 



CLIOSOPHIC m AMERICAN WHIG SOCIETIES 



COLLEGE OE NEW JERSEY, 

June 23, 1863, 



HON. JOHN T. NIXON, 



R I D G E T O N, X. J. 



PUBLISHED AT THE REQUEST OF THE AMERICAN WHIG AND CLIOSOPHIC 
SOCIETIES. 




PHILADELPHIA: 

CAXTON PRESS OF C. SHERMAN, SON & CO. 

1863. 




Clio Hall, June 23d, 1863. 
Resolved, That the thanks of this Society be tendered to the 
Hon. John T. Nixon for his able and eloquent Address de- 
livered to-day, and that a committee be appointed to solicit a 

copy for publication. 

Prof. J, T. Duffield, 

S. P. Stearns, 

F. W. Earle, 

Committee. 



Whig Hall, June 23d, 1863. 

Resolved^ That the thanks of this Society be presented to the 
Hon. John T. Nixon for the able and eloquent Address de- 
livered before the two Societies this morning, and that he be 
requested to furnish a copy for publication. 

Prof. H. C. Cameron, 
Egbert Sloss, ' 

W. W. Curtis, 

Committee. 



A D D R E S S. 



Gentlemen of the Cliosophic and American Whig 
Societies : 

I HAVE come here to-day, at the request of the 
American Whig Society, to pay the debt, which every 
Alumnus owes to his Alma Mater, and to the in- 
genuous youth, gathered within her halls for instruction 
and training. Twenty-two years have well-nigh passed, 
since the speaker stood upon this platform, as many of 
you stand to-day, to take his leave of Professors and 
classmates, and to bid adieu to the joys and sorrows, 
the pleasures and disappointments of college life. 
Then, just such a tumult of emotions filled his breast> 
as now fills yours. After years of quiet student-life, 
he found himself standing upon the verge of that 
great, noisy, active world, in which he was so soon to 
become an actor, and the near approach of which 
awakened in his soul^ alternately, those apprehensions 
of failure, and that confidence of success, in the battle 
of life, which are now struggling for the mastery in 
yours. 



Since then, twenty-one successive classes, numbering 
in the aggregate thirteen hundred and eighty young 
men, have radiated from this centre of learning to all 
parts of the land. They have not been idle spectators 
of the passing events. You will find them, with their 
armor on, in every vocation of life : in the Halls of 
Congress ; upon the Judges' bench ; at the sacred desk ; 
administering State governments ; upon the battle- 
field ; in the counting-house ; upon the farm, — dis- 
charging well or ill, their several callings, as they 
remember or forget, the lessons which they once learned 
here ; most of them, as we dare to hope, nobly per- 
forming the solemn duties, which every liberally 
educated man owes to his race, his country, and his 
God. 

I deem it as well an especial honor as a grave 
responsibility, to have been selected from among this 
number, to address you at this honored seat of 
philosophy, learning, and religion ; where in days gone 
by, as now, the fields of science have been enriched by 
patient culture ; where the spirit of patriotism has been 
nurtured, developed and strengthened by daily lessons ; 
where so many minds have been beautified and adorned 
with the accomplishments of various learning: and 
where religion has disfranchised the soul from error 
and prejudice, and enlarged its sweep and comprehen- 
sion by communion and companionship with God. 

I desire to congratulate the honored Board of 



Trustees, the reverend Faculty of the College, and 
you, my young friends, that whilst the desolations of a 
wicked Eebellion overspread the land, overwhelming 
so many literary institutions, or crippling their growth 
and usefulness, Nassau Hall yet stands in the large 
proportions of her ancient strength, still yielding and 
adding her annual tribute to the intellectual wealth, 
patriotic sentiment, and moral glory of the Republic. 

I am not here to-day, young gentlemen, to indulge 
in that cynical spirit, which advancing age sometimes 
engenders ; to overcast the sunshine of your youth with 
the shadows of life's trials, life's disappointments, and 
life's illusions ; nor to crush your gushing aspirations 
by portraying the emptiness of human ambition and 
glory. I have rather come to welcome you to life's 
arena; to bid you God-speed in all your efforts to 
achieve something worthy of yourselves and your 
opportunities; to take you by the hand as you are 
walking out from this camp of instruction, to the 
severer duties of the field, and to s^ive you such 
counsels, as a limited observation and experience may 
suggest, to help you discharge the duties, and meet the 
obligations, which your peculiar privileges here have 
imposed upon you. 

I assume, that you entered this institution to obtain 
a thorough education ; not merely to cram your minds 
with undigested facts, but to draw out, to develop to 
their fullest extent, the physical, intellectual, and moral 



faculties of your nature. I assume that the golden 
hours of your college life have been well spent and 
well improved; and that in the retrospect no bitter 
regrets of neglected opportunities arise to haunt 
and worry you. But assuming this, I am yet con- 
strained to tell you, that your education has only 
begun ; that in order to succeed on that wider theatre 
upon which you are entering, you must be constantly 
adding to your present capacities, new intellectual and 
moral armor ; and keeping the loins of your mind well 
girded, your life must be a life of endurance, of ex- 
pansion, and of progress. Your reading has made you 
familiar with Grecian History. You remember the 
long and painful exercises of the Palaestra ; how their 
youth, from early age, underwent the severest training, 
that they might prepare themselves for the contests 
of the public games. Think you, that after their 
novitiate, they suspended all further efforts'? Was 
not their preparation rather a life-struggle, and could 
any one of them hope to hear the plaudits of admiring 
thousands, whilst he received the crown and palm, or 
to be deified,* as the victor, by poetry and sculpture, 
if there were any pretermission of patient and long- 
continued training'? 

If such endurance were necessarv in order to succeed 



*"Palmaque uobilis 
Terraram dominos evehit a4 deos.' 



Horace, 



9 

in the mere physical contests of that age, how much 
more is the same quality of mind necessary, to grapple 
with the questions, opinions, and principles, which the 
awakened intellectual spirit of this age has evolved 
for the consideration of its educated men ? 

Very few of us, I fear, comprehend in all their scope 
and magnitude, the responsibilities of the times in 
which we live, or, consequently, the significance of the 
events happening around us. We forget their connection 
with the past, or that they should be interpreted by 
the past, because we do not remember, as we should, 
that the present condition of the world is but the 
natural result of the antecedent ages ; that as the race 
of man does not die, so the thoughts, the passions, the 
discoveries and the struggles of the individual, live in 
their infJaiences upon succeeding generations. Thus, 
the student of to-day in history, knows what ]\Ioses, 
Herodotus, Thucydides, Livy, Hume, Gibbon, Allison, 
and Bancroft, have written. In mental philosophy, 
he understands what Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Bacon, 
Locke, Kant, Stuart and Reed have taught. In 
physical science, he is familiar with the discoveries of 
Copernicus, Gallileo, Kepler, Newton, Franklin and 
Henry ; and in religious belief, he has the Prophets of 
the old dispensation, and the Apostles of the new, and 
greater than these, Jesus, the Christ of God, and his 
teachings, as interpreted by himself, and by St Paul, 
Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Knox, Alexander and 



10 

Hodge. In the wide and ever-multiplying depart- 
ments of thought and action, he begins where the 
scholar of the last age ended ; and if he would fulfil 
his true destiny, and make his race wiser and better, 
that he has lived ; if he would not only diffuse a 
radiance over the present, but like the stars of 
heaven, would enlighten the dawning centuries, he 
must lay aside apathy and self-indulgence, and push 
onward through opposing difficulties, subjecting them 
all to the control of his imperious will. 

The train of thought already indulged suggests the 
topic upon which I propose briefly to address you. It 
is " Endurance, as illustrated in the lives of individu- 
als, and in the history of nations, necessary for the 
attainment of any permanent good." 

By Endurance, I do not mean mere stubbornness, 
for she is often the child of ignorance and prejudice ; 
nor patience, simply, which bears, without murmuring, 
the evils she cannot avert; nor perseverance only, that 
continues in a course begun without reference to inter- 
vening obstacles ; but I mean the quality which is 
produced by the union of patience and perseverance. 

Fixing before the mind some definite purpose, lofty 
enough to call into exercise the noblest faculties, I 
mean that heroic constancy which is not misled by 
passion, does not halt from self-indulgence, does not 
faint under disasters, does not grow weary under 
trials, and which is not even beguiled by triumph, but 



11 

moves calmly onward, adhering steadily to the pur- 
pose, until death closes the contest, or success crowns 
the endeavor. 

It is that quality of the mind, which antagonizes 
impatience for immediate results. 

Every age and country have characteristics which 
distinguish them from other ages and countries. If 
you were to ask me what was the most marked trait 
of this age and country, I should answer. Impatience 
for immediate results. Everybody is in a hurry. No- 
body is willing to wait. The pernicious influence and 
effects of this spirit are everywhere felt. You will 
find them in the superficial accomplishments of too 
many of our young men ; in their failures to rise to 
eminence from their lack of early, patient training ; in 
the uncalculating speculations of the counting-room; 
in the gambhng spirit of the stock market ; and espe- 
cially just now, in the disposition of even good men 
to complain of the slow movements of the civil and 
military authorities, and in their proneness to carp at 
and find fault with every effort, or want of effort, to 
suppress Rebellion, and with every measure put for- 
ward or withheld to protect the Government against 
threatened dissolution. 

To this national characteristic, leading to disastrous 
results, I would oppose Endurance, so fruitful of per- 
manent good. 

I might detain you here and now with many exam- 



12 

pies in individual life, exhibiting how much may be 
accomplished under the pressure of adverse circum- 
stances. I might speak to you of ^sop, born 2500 
years ago, in the infancy of Grecian civilization, whose 
marvellous power in seizing upon natural objects with 
which to illustrate moral truths, has awakened num- 
berless imitators in all ages, and who still stands the 
prince and father of Fabulists ; of Terence, who first 
saw the light in Africa, and whose comic delineations 
of character not only delighted the audiences of the 
Roman theatre, but have charmed the scholars through 
all the centuries since his time ; and of Epictetus, the 
statesman and philosopher, whose honest administra- 
tion of civil government as much endeared him to the 
people of his own age, as his clear, steady perception 
of moral truth has won the admiration and esteem of 
ours. 

These men sprung from the lowest walks of society ; 
were all born slaves ; endured every species of priva- 
tion, hardship, and trial ; but, surmounting them all by 
the stern force of an unconquerable will, they have se- 
cured their niche in the temple of fame, and have 
placed their names in that list of worthies whom 
"posterity will not willingly let die." 

Or, coming nearer to our own times, I might direct 
your attention to the early life and character of Martin 
Luther, Benjamin Franklin, and Andrew Jackson; 
show you how they were compelled to struggle with 



13 

poverty, the world's neglect, and the discouragements 
of an adverse fate ; how they emerged by patient en- 
durance, from obscurity into the proud position of 
earth's heroes, until the efforts of Luther emancipated 
the human mind from the superstitions and tyranny of 
a corrupt faith ; and Franklin enlarged the domain of 
philosophic thought, by unveiling the mysteries of na- 
ture, and Jackson shaped and moulded and controlled 
the destinies of a continent, by supporting, through 
all the stages of his pubHc career, the fundamental 
doctrines of popular power. 

But passing from these more familiar examples of 
the results of patience and perseverance, let us consider 
a little more minutely, the life and characteristics of 
two other men ; the most remarkable in some respects, 
which the last century produced : alike in the poverty, 
endurance and self-reliance of their earlier life, but 
widely differing in the tendencies and development of 
their minds, and in the impression of their character 
upon their contemporaries, and on succeeding times. 
Go back with me more than one hundi^ed years to the n |2,\^'''^a^ 
town of Chumnitz, in Saxony. Enter one of the meanest C(^1^^ .> 
hovels there, and you will find an honest hard-working v^^-^^ 
weaver, struggling night and day, over his unresting- 
loom, to provide even the scantiest support for his 
family. A cheerless hearth was that, where penury 
and want were the daily companions of the household. 
The eldest child, emerging from that wretchedness 



14 

years afterwards, said to the world, " My first impres- 
sions in life came from the tears of my mother, who 
had not bread for her children. How often have I 
seen her on Saturday nights, wringing her hands and 
weeping, when she had come back with what the hard 
toil of my father had produced, and could find none to 
buy it." Yet even in the midst of physical destitution 
and carking hunger of body, the mind of that boy was 
more hungry for intellectual food. He attended the 
village school, and before he was ten years old, he paid 
his school fees by giving lessons to his neighbors' chil- 
dren. Soon learning here more than his teacher knew, 
his next effort was to get private instruction in the 
Latin language, in which he at length succeeded, by 
agreeing with his uncle, in consideration of the fees 
advanced, to repeat on Sunday such portions of the 
Gospel, as he was able to commit to memory during 
the week. After studying for two years, he was 
informed that he had exhausted the classical resources 
of his instructor. He next longs for a place in the 
grammar school of the town. How can that be accom- 
plished '? Where are the two and one half shillings a 
quarter, the books and the scholar's cloak to come 
from] He could not ask or receive help from the 
father, who, having grown prematurely old and weary 
in his life-struggle against poverty, could have no sym- 
pathy with the son in his soul-longings and mental 
aspirations. The clergyman of the parish, however. 



15 

agrees to help him, and does pay the quarterly fees ; 
but from the want of means, he is obliged, in rags and 
hunj^er, to borrow the class-books of his school-fellows, 
and to copy thence in advance his daily lessons. He 
is all alone among men. He hears no good words of 
encouragement and cheer. Still he works on and 
strives upwards. In his mind's vision, he sees above him 
the beckoning angels, and in their approving smiles, 
he reads the auguries of his future triumph. His insa- 
tiable thirst for learning, and an intense desire to raise 
himself from his debased condition into something 
higher and better, urge him forward ; but, outside of 
these motives, he seems now to have been driven 
onward by a fierce defiance of Fate, and by a deter- 
mined resolution never to yield in his hand to hand 
grapple with Misfortune. 

He leaves the grammar school, and resolves to con- 
tinue his studies at the University of Leipsic. He 
does not stop to ask how this can be done. He has no 
suitable clothing, nor books, nor bread ; but he has five 
shillings in his pocket, and better than^that, an uncon- 
querable will in his heart. He goes to Leipsic. He 
leaves behind him a grumbling father, who, notwith- 
standing his ill success in life, has more faith in weaving 
than in scholarship ; and a hopeful, anxious mother, 
who for years had been treasuring in her inmost soul, 
secretly, like Mary of old, the daily indications of his 
future greatness. He takes from humble servant-girls 



16 

scraps of bread to eat. He gathers learning here and 
there from such books as he can get access to. He 
walks boldly into the open lecture ; and when he 
has no money to pay class fees, he treads softly and 
quietly to the edge of ill-guarded class-rooms, hoping 
to steal now and then a stray thought, falling from the 
lips of professors, upon the ears of heedless students. 

Thus he passes his life to his twenty-third year ; 
starving his body, that he may feed his mind. So ear- 
nest was he in the acquisition of knowledge, his his- 
torian says, that for six months he allowed himself but 
two nights in the week for sleep. The residue of his 
time was given to those profound investigations in 
philosophy and the ancient languages, which in after- 
years, by the confession of the literary world, placed 
his name in the front rank of scholars and philologists. 
To illustrate his tenacity of purpose, let it be borne in 
mind, that whilst he was thus prosecuting his studies, 
and when he had not enough money to buy a loaf of 
bread, he was offered a tutorship in a private family 
at Magdeburg, the acceptance of which would have 
relieved all his physical necessities. But it would also 
have involved his removal from the University. After 
a violent struggle, he resisted what seemed to be the 
seductions of the tempter to prefer ease to duty ; made 
the choice of Hercules, and remained with his old com- 
panion, Poverty, at Leipsic. How true is the commen- 
tary of a modern essayist upon such, conduct 1 " A man 



17 

with a half volition goes backwards and forwards, and 
makes no way in the smoothest road ; a man with a 
whole volition advances on the roughest, and will reach 
his purpose, even if there be but little wisdom in it." 

Completing his course at the University, we next 
hear of him at Dresden, the capital of his native coun- 
try. He has been allured there against the convic- 
tions of his independent will, by the persuasions of 
friends and the promises of the Prime Minister. He 
danced attendance upon the court for more than a year ; 
lodged in garrets or cellars as opportunity offered ; and 
often gathered empty peas-cods, and had them boiled, 
as his only meal. Such patience and endurance were 
rewarded in the autumn of 1753, by his appointment 
to the place of under-secretary in the Briihl Library, at 
the annual salary of eighty dollars. This sum seems 
small to us, but it was much for the poor scholar, and 
enabled him to enter upon his proper career in Hfe, 
The next year he prepared and published at Leipsic, 
his edition of TibuUus, in which he began to exhibit 
the fruits of his study, and his wonderful talent as a 
commentator of the classics. This was followed by his 
translation of some of the works of Epictetus, whose 
stoical principles had given strength and nourishment 
to the struggling soul of the friendless scholar. 

But such works, then or now, coming into the world 
unheralded, and the children of obscure parentage, 
make slight impression upon the public mind ; and not 

2 



18 

much is said or thought concerning them, until the 
light of the author's subsequent reputation is reflected 
back upon them. 

I do not propose to follow this enduring child of 
genius much further. Driven from Dresden by the 
Seven Years' War, he spent some time at Wittemburg; 
wandered from place to place without fixed employ- 
ment ; became the passive recipient of a gifted woman's 
love, and married her, when neither party had money 
enough to purchase a wedding garment; but amidst all 
his trials and vicissitudes he never lost sight of the 
great purpose of his life, — the acquisition of knowledge. 
After the declaration of peace in 1763, he returned 
to Dresden. He had not yet grown into much distinc- 
tion at home, for it appears from his own statement, 
that upon his return he was told that inquiries for him 
had been made from Hanover, and no one could tell 
where he was. During his absence, the great Gessner^ 
Professor of Eloquence in the University at Gottingen, 
had died, and the Hanoverian authorities, proud of the 
growing reputation of their school, were solicitous that 
his successor should be able to fill his chair. Applica- 
tion was made to Ernes ti for advice and help. He 
knew no man in Germany fit for the place ; but warmly 
recommended to them Rhunken, of Leyden. Rhunken 
wrote, declining to leave his country, but at the same 
time earnestly asked them, " Why do you seek out of 
Germany for what Germany itself affords 1 Why not 



19 

for Gessner's successor take Christian Gottlih Heyne^ 
that true pupil of Ernesti, who has shown how much 
he knows of the Latin literature by his 'TibuUus;' 
of Greek, by his ' Epictetus V In my opinion, he is 
the only one that can replace your Gessner. Believe 
me, there is in him such a richness of genius and 
learning, that ere long all Europe will ring with his 
praise." 

How wide the companionship of man in the republic 
of letters ! How it transcends and outgrows the limits 
of earth's nationalities ! E-hunken had never seen 
Heyne, but he knew him. He had studied his " Ti- 
buUus" and " Epictetus," and had discovered in them 
the germs of that wonderful power, which enabled him 
afterwards, through the writings of the ancients, to 
reproduce not their language merely, but their life, 
spirit, character, and modes of thought. 

He went to Gottingen. The professorship was offered 
to him and accepted, and thus ended his long struggle 
with his physical wants. He remained there half a 
century, until his death. Emancipated from the cares 
of life, he soon became famous in the empire of letters. 
Carrying the torch of philosophy into the hitherto un- 
explored recesses of the olden times, he opened a new 
department of learning by his original interpretation 
of classical literature. His publications, correspond- 
ence and personal influence raised the University of 
Gottingen to the first rank of German schools, and 



20 

when he died, not the University alone, not Saxony 
only, but all Europe mourned. The great men of 
Germany, her princes and scholars, met by appoint- 
ment at Chumnitz, his birth-place, to celebrate the 
memory of the poor weaver's son. They visited the 
hovel where his old father had toiled, and in poverty 
died. They went to the school-room where the ragged 
boy had picked up, as best he could, the crumbs of 
learning. They walked with reverence in the same 
paths which his bare feet had trod. And then they 
uttered grand speeches to his praise. God help a 
world which allows the unfriended son of genius and 
want to die, and then spends its breath in hosannas, 
and its money in marble for his grave ! 

Whilst Germany was thus lamenting the loss of her 
greatest scholar, the busy brain of an humble daily 
toiler in the coal mines of England was working out a 
problem, which, if successful, he knew would revolu- 
tionize society, open to man new fields of industry, 
multiply and spread abroad the comforts of life, and, 
by bringing the peoples of different nations into closer 
communion, would advance the beneficent ends and 
aims of modern civilization. It was George Stepheyison ,, 
trying to impart power and efficiency to the locomotive, 
which he found so weak and inefficient; trying to do 
for the locomotive what James Watt had done for the 
condensing engine; trying to do with steam upon land 
what Robert Fulton had done upon the water. 



21 

The world moved on, all unconscious of the vigils of 
the lonely worker. Nor science, nor wealth, nor patron- 
age could stoop to aid the uneducated son of toil. But 
it was no sudden chimera with him. It had been a 
present thought since his earliest boyhood. Whilst 
yet too young to labor, he had been sent to the col- 
liery with his father's dinner, and there had become 
acquainted with the old pumping engine, of which his 
father was the fireman. It was love at first sight ; not 
a blind adoration of the defective engine then in use ; 
but an intelligent anticipation of what this mighty 
instrument of man's progress would accomplish, when, 
rid of its hindrances and imperfections, and developed 
by human wit to its largest capacity of strength and 
power, it should assume its appropriate place in the 
conduct of the world's affairs. His earliest amusement 
in life was the building of engines with mud and clay. 
His first expressed ambition was to be an engine-man. 
In the history of mental triumphs, I do not call to 
mind a more beautiful illustration of what faith, pa- 
tience, resolution, and endurance will^ accomplish than 
that furnished by the life of this benefactor of his race. 

Let us look at it for a moment. Born in the hum- 
blest grade of English society, he entered the mines as a 
day laborer, for sixpence a day, at nine years of age. 
He became assistant fireman at fourteen, and such were 
his diligence and sobriety of life, that at fifteen he 
received a man's wages, and at seventeen he was pro- 



22 

moted to the high place of his earliest ambition, an 
engine-man. He now addressed himself to the study 
of the details of the engine; to a complete knowledge 
of its construction and mode of working ; spending all 
his leisure hours in taking the machine to pieces, and 
readjusting its various parts, not only that he might 
understand the secret springs of its industry and 
power, but that he might remedy the weaknesses 
which impaired its efficiency, and had baffled the skill 
of other inventors. 

He was now eighteen years of age, and did not 
know the alphabet. Of an inquisitive mind, he groped 
around for knowledge. He could learn little from the 
associations of his daily life, as his companions knew 
less tiian himself. He was told, that in scientific 
works were recorded the results of other men's labors 
and experiments, and, although engaged twelve hours 
a day in manual labor, he resolved to master the art of 
reading, as indispensable to his further progress. 
With him to will was to accomplish. Deploring his 
ignorance, he was not ashamed to confess it. For two 
years this full-grown workman sat down, three nights 
in the week, with the children of the laborers, in the 
night-school of the neighborhood, that he might ac- 
quire such a knowledge of reading and arithmetic, as 
would enable him to prosecute his studies alone. 
There are no difficulties in man's pathway that such a 
resolution will not conquer. Whilst other miners, 



23 

contented with their lot, spent their leisure hours in 
idleness, and their surplus earnings in the bar-roora, 
he was most penurious of time and money, except so 
far as he could use them in enlarging the circle of his 
learning. He had not genius ; but he had more pre- 
cious gifts, — a sensible, well-regulated mind, and inge- 
nuity, energy and perseverance to overcome every ob- 
stacle which arose in his pathway to knowledge. 

Such a resolute purpose, such improvement of op- 
portunities, and such husbandry of time, brought their 
reward. From an engine-man he became a brakesman, 
from a brakesman an engine-wright ; from an engine- 
wright a constructor and manufacturer of locomotives. 
He was now in a position to avail himself of the results 
of his long study and observation. He had learned the 
defects of the old engine, and independent of scien- 
tific help, he knew how to correct them. He may have 
discovered no new principles in the use of steam as a 
motive power ; but, gathering together the threads of 
other men's labors, he made such new applications of 
old principles as to produce original results. The 
great battle of his life was his fight for railway loco- 
motives. He here devoted twenty years of his best 
energies ; for he comprehended from the start, what 
beneficent consequences to the well-being of the race 
were involved in the issue of the contest. He fought 
it, single-handed and alone, against the prejudices of 
ignorance ; against the bigotry of class legislation ; 



24 

against the sneers of the whole body of civil engi- 
neers ; against the united voice of science ; against 
the system of fixed engines, horse-power, and atmos- 
pheric pressure, and he finally triumphed, — so grandly 
triumphed, that all opposition was conquered and 
silenced, and he stood forth, confessedly the foremost 
man of his times ; the embodiment and centre of rail- 
road enterprise and development; the companion of 
nobles and crowned heads, and the father of the 
locomotive railway system of the world ! 

But I must hasten on, and show you how this 
quality of endurance is illustrated, by its beneficent 
results, in the history of nations. 

A nation is merely the aggregate expression of the 
individual life of a people. The personal characteris- 
tics harmonize and blend in unity, and that unity, 
manifesting itself in action, determines the general 
position and character which the community takes and 
bears in history. Thus Leonidas, with his three hun- 
dred men at Thermopylae — standing in the gorges of 
that mountain pass, a bulwark of living hearts, to stop 
the overflow of the Persian tide — w^hilst he was 
revealing to all coming time the inwrought heroism of 
the Spartan nation, was also illustrating the individual 
teachings of the Spartan mother, who said to her son, 
" Return iuWl this shield or upoii it." 

A nation, too, has its infancy, its manhood, and its 
decline, and it exhibits to the world, in these respec- 



25 

tive stages of its existence, the same traits and 
qualities which are developed in the individual. Thus 
our own country is yet in her youth. Let no one 
think that these fiery trials through which she is pass- 
ing, will consume her. She is yet in her youth, and is 
only emerging into a higher life, a nobler civilization; 
and does she not too often show the peculiar traits 
of the young, — boastfulness, irritability, jealousy, and. 
sensitiveness of the world's opinion '? England is now 
in the manhood of her career, and with the man's 
enlarged experience, matured dignity, and greater 
knowledge, does she not too often grow indifferent to 
himian approbation or censure'? Spain, once the 
controlling power of Europe, has become decrepit with 
age, and although like the aged, retaining the instincts 
of self-preservation, has she not in a great degree lost 
the power and capacity of defending her life against 
internal or external attack '? 

Now, if this be true, — if national characteristics be 
only the development of the individual life, it follows 
that the same arguments which pro v^ the importance 
of this quality of endurance in order to success in the 
individual, apply with equal force, to prove its indis- 
pensable necessity in order to success in a nation. 
And here, as in the case of individuals, we are not left 
without instances and illustrations in past history. 

You remember the Persian invasion. You have 
lingered over the glowing pages of Herodotus, whilst 



26 

your fancy pictured the " pomp and circumstance," the 
magnificence and glory of the preparations, which the 
mightiest ruler of the world's mightiest empire made to 
subjugate the yet infant republics of Greece. You 
have counted that immense army of millions, drawn 
from all the nations of Asia, and that fleet of thousands, 
manned by hundreds of thousands of skilful seamen. 
You have sat, perchance, with Xerxes upon the banks 
of the Hellespont, and seeing all the surrounding 
waters croAvded with ships, and the plains of Abydos 
covered with troops, you have sympathized with him 
in those emotions of joy, which such a pageantry of 
power awakened in his soul, and have shed tears of 
sorrow, at the transitory nature of human things which 
such a spectacle suggested. You have seen the waves 
of the sea bridged over, and the tops of the mountain 
levelled ; the Hellespont whipped into obedience, and 
proud old Athos, whose summit had been for centuries 
the home of celestial glories, made to bow low, until 
you almost trembled at these impious exhibitions of 
man's endeavor to subject the elements and forces of 
nature to his control. You have then turned from all 
this display of physical strength, to Athens and 
Sparta, — the two cities of Greece, for the subjugation 
of which this extraordinary aggregation of national 
resources was made. You have stood with Leonidas 
and his comrades at Thermopylae ; and in their self- 
immolation, have witnessed the highest type of national , 



27 

endurance, and have found the inspiration, which in 
the ages since has nerved the patriot's arm and 
strengthened his heart, to strike for liberty against the 
hydra-headed forms of oppression and misrule. You 
have gone with Themistocles up the sloping hill of the 
Pnyx at Athens, and have listened whilst he inter- 
preted to that earnest, religious people the mysterious 
utterances of Delphi. You have heard him tell them . 
that Athens consisted not of its walls and houses, but 
its citizens, and that the saving of these was the pre- 
servation of the city. Stirred by his eloquence, you 
have seen all men capable of bearing arms enter, with 
a firm and resolute step, into the wooden walls of their 
vessels at Salamis ; abandoning homes, altars, wives, 
mothers, their old men and their children ; the temples 
of their gods and the tombs of their ancestors ; and 
shortly afterwards, in that narrow strait, moved by the 
stern will of such untrained sailors, and reckless of 
uncounted odds, you have seen these wooden walls 
dashed against the mighty armament which all Asia 
had sent for their enslavement, and scatter it here and 
there, as the storms and waves scatter, until hardly a 
vessel was left to carry back the news of the sad disas- 
ter. And you have witnessed upon the plains of 
Boeotia, the final failure of this great attempt at subju- 
gation, when seventy thousand Greeks met more than 
five times their number at Platese, and after prodigies 
of personal valor, swept the last footprint of the Asiatic 



28 

invader from the soil of Europe. Your sympathies 
have been all alive in such a struggle, and you have 
rejoiced to learn that endurance, with desperate odds 
against her, can break the oppressor's rod ; that an 
heroic constancy of purpose can eventually exhaust the 
most fearful resources of the tyrant; and that even 
infinitudes of wealth, and the despotism of physical 
power, are as nothing, when compared with these 
mightier miracles of prowess, which patience and per- 
severance can perform. 

But this is not half the lesson, which such a contest 
teaches. The careful student also learns, that Persia 
and Greece were engaged in a conflict, which must re- 
sult in the political and intellectual supremacy of 
Europe or Asia ; that the destinies of two continents 
were involved; that the defeat of Persia was the end 
of Asiatic domination in Europe ; and that henceforth, 
as a consequence of Grecian endurance, the European 
continent was to emerge from the night of barbarism, 
and through the influence of her laws, religion, arts, 
philosophy, and arms, was to control and govern the 
world ! 

Turn to another and more suggestive example in 
the sixteenth century, — the revolt of the Netherlands 
against the power and domination of Spain. 

Contemplating this period of the world's history, we 
stand upon high ground. Behind us, lie the Middle 
Ages of Europe, just drawn to their close. The Ro- 



29 

man Empire has fallen ; the power of Feudalism has 
been broken; and with their overthrow, the ancient 
centralization, as opposed to the spirit of individual 
liberty, is disappearing. The union of Church and 
State has produced its inevitable fruits. Through all 
these dark centuries the most visible facts standing 
out to the view, are kingly prerogative and sacerdotal 
tyranny. Around us, is a long-oppressed and now 
aroused Humanity, beginning to comprehend and to 
struggle for its God-given rights. Liberty is reviving. 
The confluent rills of a various culture are growing into 
a torrent. Printing has been invented, and, by the 
multiplication of books, learning is emerging from the 
cloister into the light of common day. The discovery 
of America has awakened a new spirit of enterprise 
upon the ocean, and the humanizing influence of 
Commerce, produced by the interchange of ideas, 
inventions, products, manufactures, and by personal 
association, is felt by nations which had been living for 
generations in the dull monotony of isolation. New 
views of religious truth are spreading oVer Europe. An 
inquiry into the relations which man sustains to his 
fellows, is followed or preceded, I care not which, by 
an inquiry into the relations which he sustains to his 
Maker. The spirit of civil liberty, and the genius of 
religious freedom, walk hand in hand over this earth, 
and he who attempts to divorce them, commits a crime 
against God and Humanity. Luther has just died in 



30 

Germany, Calvin is still living in Switzerland; but 
what matters it whether man lives or dies, when the 
truths which he utters are immortal ! 

And standing there, may I not add, that before us, 
in prophetic vision, arise the coming centuries, through 
which the great contest of ages, — the struggle of the 
individual man for his rights against the usurpations 
of regal and priestly power, now recommencing in 
modern times, is to continue, revolution after revolu- 
tion, link after link in the one chain of events, until 
the Genius of Liberty finally triumphs ; not the ab- 
stract deity of the ancients, too often, in her man- 
embraces, begetting anarchy, disorder, and licentious- 
ness ; but the practical earth-child of modern civiliza- 
tion, born of written constitutions, temperate progress, 
and social order ; that Liberty, w^hich not only teaches 
the individual to rise up before kings and priests, and 
say, " I am a Man ; give to me the rights of Humanity !" 
but also induces him to add, " You are my Brother, and 
I will do unto you even as I would that you should do 
unto me." 

We see this contest open in the Netherlands. If 
Liberty had a home in Europe during the preceding fif- 
teen centuries, it was in the humble abodes of this brave 
Teutonic race. They had been made hardy in their 
sharp conflicts with the forces of nature and of men. 
They had reclaimed their lands from the inroads of the 
sea ; struggled bravely against the unconquerable Ro- 



31 

man legions led by the greatest Csesar ; rebelled against 
Vespasian ; fought the invading Franks and Vandals ; 
refused to recognize the overwhelming power of Charle- 
magne ; gave reluctant assent to the dogmas of Popery ; 
hated Feudalism, and in lieu of feudal chain and papal 
yoke, had coveted and in some degree secured munici- 
pal privileges and the freedom of religious thought. 
Charles V., after abridging their civil rights, and 
attempting to stop the progress of the new opinions, by 
the fire and sword of cruel persecutions, had abdicated 
the throne, and his proud, cold, silent son, the most 
powerful sovereign of his age, menacing wdth his 
boundless treasures and well-trained armies, the inde- 
pendence of two continents, was now stooping to strip 
this people of artisans, shepherds, and fishermen, of the 
few privileges which the Inquisition, the spiritual courts, 
and the exactions of his father, had left untouched. 

The Netherlanders resisted. It was the old strug- 
gle between chartered liberty and foreign despotism ; 
between human rights above all charters, and the lust 
and usurpations of unlicensed powel. The odds were 
fearful, and to the eye of man the result not doubtful. 
A nation of less than three millions of people, devoted 
more to commerce, trade, and the arts of peace, than 
to war, would not seem to be able to resist the ven- 
geance of the greatest potentate of earth ; within the 
borders of whose dominions the sun never set, and 
whose life was a continual warfare against popular 



32 

rights and the spirit of rehgious toleration. But 
there is a God in history, whose wise designs often 
contradict the probabilities of man's experience. For 
reasons which we can now understand, but which to 
that people seemed inscrutable, he permitted this con- 
test to extend through nearly three generations, until 
the accumulated riches of years of peaceful trade were 
wasted; their lands impoverished; their homes de- 
stroyed; whole districts of country depopulated; 
their old men and their children butchered, and 
their wives and daughters worse than butchered 
by foreign mercenaries. For a quarter of a century, 
he sorely tried the soul of the great William and his 
followers, by successive defeats. He even allowed the 
arts of treachery to snatch away the fruits of assured 
triumph. Thus, having consumed the dross of their 
natures by long-suffering and bitter trials ; having per- 
mitted their trusted leader to perish by the hands of 
the assassin; having removed from them all human 
props, that he might show them that their extremity 
was his opportunity, he sent to them a succession of 
victories; but he laid the foundations of the young 
Republic in tribulation and sorrow, that from the 
depths of their greatest national disasters, the future 
times might learn what undying faith and endurance 
can accomplish. 

This great struggle, thus resulting after various for- 
tunes, in the recognition of popular rights, and in es- 



33 

tablishing the foundations of social order, did not end 
in the Netherlands. In the next century it was trans- 
ferred to English soil; manifesting the same heart- 
yearnings for civil and religious freedom; the same 
fearless contempt for the hereditary arts and usurpa- 
tions of king-craft; the same enduring faith in ulti- 
mate triumph ; and issuing, at length, in the exile of 
the faithless Stuarts, and in placing upon their throne^ 
with constitutional limitations of regal power, the 
great-grandson of the hero who had rescued the liber- 
ties of Holland from the grasp of the perfidious Spa- 
niard. 

One century later it appeared upon a new theatre, 
when the descendants of these same men in America, 
inspired with heroic courage by such examples, and 
animated by the splendid results of such endurance, 
struck off the chains which bound them to a foreign 
dynasty ; proclaimed to the world the imprescriptible 
right of man to self-government ; by popular consent 
founded a nationality, and organized and established a 
government, which, notwithstanding the madness and 
treason of its children, restless of the wholesome re- 
straints of law, or struggling for disintegration, will 
endure and live, and living, bless the coming ages ! 

Gentlemen, my task is done. In the survey of in- 
cumbent duties, as citizens of the Republic, and as 
members of society, I charge you to make a faithful 
application of these individual and historical examples. 

3 



34 

Learn from them the trite lesson, often repeated and 
never fully comprehended, that labor, perseverance and 
endurance are the conditions of success in life. In the 
choice of your profession, and in selecting your place, 
as workers in society, listen not to the voice of partial 
or even impartial friends. Exercise for yourselves an 
honest and intelligent scrutiny into the capabilities of 
your minds ; consult your tastes ; ascertain what you 
are fit for and what you can do ; obey the inclinations 
of an enlightened judgment, and then walk in the 
pathway which that marks out and illuminates. Re- 
member, that in the great machinery of the universe, 

" Nature to each allots his proper sphere, 
But that forsaken, we, like comets, err; 
Tossed thro' the void, by some rude shock we're broke ; 
And all our boasted fire is lost in smoke." 

Get, therefore, in the right place at the start, and 
resolutely, perseveringly and enduringly continue in 
it: and your future life, instead of being the mere 
snatches of an unremembered tune, aimless, jarring, 
and discordant, will become a full diapason of harmo- 
nious sounds, gladdening and blessing yourselves and 
your race. 

In the present crisis of the world's history, the edu- 
cated youth of America are summoned to the discharge 
of most responsible duties. 

An imperilled Republic, struggling for life ; a human 
society, disturbed in all the elements of its social or- 



35 

ganization; a God-revealed Christianity, attacked at 
all points by specious forms of error and infidelity, 
appeal to you to throw aside sloth, indifference, and the 
seductions of ease, and to enter with all your strength 
into the fight on the side of duty, truth, and righteous- 
ness. 

This land of ours, once realizing the simple rhyme 
of Wordsworth, 

" Fair scenes for childhood's opening bloom. 
For sportive youth to stray in, 
For manhood to enjoy his streugth, 
And age to wear away in," 

now lies bleeding at every pore ; not stricken down by 
the hands of foreign enemies, but in the very house of 
its friends. 

This Government of ours — the embodiment of the 
rights of humanity, secured by the continuous contest 
of ages ; the only full expression to the world of man's 
capacity for self-government; the only hope and refuge 
in the future against the oppressions and aggressions of 
power — is now in its greatest peril, and perchance 
upon its last trial. 

This society of ours, whose foundations, as we had 
fondly dreamed, were immovably fixed, not only in the 
wants and fears of men, but in their affections, through 
the security which it gives to their rights and interests, 
is now trembHng and heaving to its centre by the dis- 
integrating forces of false principles in politics and 



36 

philosophy; by an agrarian spirit, which levels dis- 
tinctions, not arbitrary, but growing out of the nature 
of things, and necessary for the existence of social 
order; by a corrupting spirit, which substitutes the 
power of wealth for the legitimate influence of virtue 
and intelligence; and by an infidel spirit, which, wan- 
dering away from the simpler forms of ancestral faith, 
fails to recognize a constantly superintending Provi- 
dence in the direction of our individual lives, and in 
the determination of our national destinies. 

This Christianity of ours, which was aforetime reve- 
renced as the heaven-born child of faith ; as the healer 
of the world's maladies; as the only light in the uni- 
verse which casts a radiance beyond the portals of the 
grave, is in danger, amid the struggles and passions of 
the hour, of losing her hold upon the hearts and con- 
sciences of men; and in still greater danger of being 
degraded into a child of earth, by having her doctrines, 
principles, and claims subjected to the limited and 
defective processes of human reason. 

The country, society, and the church summon, nay 
challenge you, to gird on your armor ; to step out upon 
the stage of action; to take your place, at the lead, or 
in the ranks, as God wills ; and to do your whole duty 
in the conflicts which the past ages have bequeathed to 
us, and for the issue of which posterity and God will 
hold us responsible. 




^ 



iiiiiii 

028 333 670 



i: % 



^^H 



■■V.^ 



